Nevertheless, we have the authority of the Lord Chief Justice (Erle) of the Common Pleas (Turnbull v. Bird, 1861), for the principle that very strong and injurious language, if provoked and employed “for the purpose of maintaining the truth,” “without any corrupt motive,” may be innocent in the view of the law. We have the sanction of the same eminent Judge that “a man may publish defamatory matter in defence either of his private or his public rights. Every subject of this realm has a right to comment upon the acts of public men, for they concern him as such subject; but he must not make his commentary a cloak for malice. Such a commentary, however libellous, is justifiable if the defendant honestly believes that he is writing what is fair and just; but if he makes wilful misrepresentation, or misstatement that might have been avoided by ordinary care, his protection ceases.” We find it assumed by Chief Justice Erle, and stated in plain terms by Mr. Justice Willes, that there is such a thing as a “privilege of fair discussion on a matter of public interest,” though two of the learned Judges of the Queen’s Bench were at much pains to show that a right belonging to all her Majesty’s subjects cannot properly be called a “privilege.” Moreover, we have the general but most emphatic testimony of Lord Ellenborough, that where the “object” is “to correct misrepresentations of fact, to refute sophistical reasoning, to expose a vicious taste in literature, or to censure what is hostile to morality,” there can be no libel.
In a case against the Lincolnshire Chronicle, the Judge, Mr. Justice Coleridge, laid down the law as follows:
“In discussing the public conduct of a public man, a journalist might certainly use the most unceremonious freedom, and juries should not be nice in criticising the language in which the censure might be conveyed, if they could see that the motive and spirit of the whole were public and honest. On the other hand, no newspaper was justified in commenting upon the private life even of a public man; but the present appeared to be an intermediate case. The plaintiff filled a public situation, but it could hardly be said that the paragraph was merely a comment upon his conduct as alderman, neither did it relate to a strictly private matter. The most objectionable paragraph appeared to him to be that which imputed to the plaintiff ‘confused notions on the important matters of meum and tuum,’ but the jury must look at the whole, and say whether in their opinion it exceeded the bounds of fair comment upon the conduct of a person filling the position which the plaintiff filled. The jury found a verdict for the defendant.”
But, by the judicial dicta in Campbell v. Spottiswoode, no greater latitude is allowed in comments on public topics than in remarks on private affairs. Any theoretical indulgence to the former, whether it be called privilege or not, is a worthless boon if truth, or rather legal demonstration, is to be the only test of “libel or no libel” for literary critiques. As Mr. Bovill well pointed out, no privilege is wanted where truth can be successfully pleaded. On the other hand, no privilege is demanded where malice can be established against the writer, or inferred by the jury from the tone and spirit of the composition. It is where a public critic, with the best and purest intentions, has injured the good name of a public man that the question arises. The great difficulty is to render the Press harmless to individuals, and yet to leave it powerful for good.—Abridged from the Times.
With regard to the propagation of Libel, “it may be some doubt in the eye of morality, whether the purchaser of a satirical libel does not share in the guilt of the author; and whether the pleasure in reading it is not of a criminal sort, and a proof of the malignity of human nature. There would be no thieves nor stolen goods, experience tells us, if there were no receivers; and no scurrilous writings nor libellous prints would be published, to corrupt the ear or gratify the impudence of the eye, if there were no purchasers.” These sentiments are from Bayle’s Essay on Defamatory Libels; and we remember Lord Brougham to have once expressed himself in almost the identical words of Bayle, in a speech on the Newspaper Stamp Duty.
Induction of a Rector.
The ceremony of inducting a clergyman to his benefice is briefly as follows: the instance being the induction of the Rev. Pascoe Grenfell Hill, Feb. 9, 1863, to the benefice of the united parishes of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas, Lombard-street. The Rev. Mr. Hill brought with him the Rev. J. Lupton, who performed the office of induction. The reverend Chaplain, therefore, accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Hill, proceeded to the church-door in Lombard-street, and the Clerk having put the key into the lock of the door, the Chaplain took Mr. Hill’s right hand, and placing it on the key thus inserted in the lock, said, holding the archdeacon’s mandate in his hand, “By virtue of this instrument, I, James Lupton, Rector of St. Michael’s, Queenhithe, induct you into the real, actual, and corporal possession of the United Rectory of St. Edmund the King and Martyr with St. Nicholas Acons, with all its fruits, members, and appurtenances.” The new Rector then opened the church door, and having entered the church, shut himself in, and then pulled one of the bells, so as to assure the public that he was in the church and had taken possession of it. He then returned to the church-door, opened it, and let his friends and the officials in.
Benefit of Clergy.
The privilege of Benefit of Clergy,—Privilegium Clericale—arose in the pious regard paid by Christian princes to the Church in its infant state, and consisted of—1st, an exemption of places consecrated to religious duties from criminal arrests, which was the foundation of sanctuaries; 2nd, exemption of the persons of clergymen from criminal process before the secular judge, in particular cases, which was the original meaning of the privilegium clericale. In the course of time, however, the benefit of clergy extended to every one who could read, for such was the ignorance of those periods, that this was thought a great proof of learning; and it was enacted, that from the scarcity of clergy in the realm of England, there should be a prerogative allowed to the clergy, that if any man who could read were to be condemned to death, the bishop of the diocese might, if he would, claim him as a clerk, and dispose of him in some places of the clergy as he might deem meet; but if the bishop would not demand him, or if the prisoner could not read, then he was to be put to death. 3 Edward I., 1274.—Benefit of Clergy was abolished by statute 7th and 8th George IV., c. 28.